


Carbon Copy

by JaneSkazki



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 21:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20627774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneSkazki/pseuds/JaneSkazki
Summary: This  is a ST: Enterprise spin off. I tried to find relationships that apply. Wow, that list is crazy. Anyhow, if I'd found what I needed, it would have given the punchline away, so let's not worry about it. There is no actual sex in this story. Sulu is a caring friend to his young colleague. Chekov orders a hamburger and fries.





	Carbon Copy

Carbon Copy

We found ourselves in 1950’s Arizona. Of course, we’d all heard the ‘story’ of Carbon Creek, so I was pretty confident we could handle ourselves. We were better off than T’Pol’s makebelieve Vulcans too: we had a timescale. It would take Mister Scott a week to fix the warp engines (he’d said ten days, so I figured a week), and we didn’t have the disadvantage of green blood. Chekov and I could walk right along the highway into town and take a job in the local diner - there was sure to be a diner - without worrying about keeping our ears covered. The main danger, I reckoned, was Chekov’s accent, but I was probably wrong about that too. There were plenty of Russians in America in the 1950s. Plenty of people from anywhere you cared to mention, and most everyone else couldn’t tell a Russian accent from a Welsh one. Either way, I figured with a little care, we could pass for just two more drifters on the road, and if we were willing to work for our supper, no one would have any qualms about selling it to us. 

It was around seventeen hundred hours when we finally passed the sign at the city limits: Spring Valley, Arizona, population 1537. Five in the afternoon, as far as they were concerned. They were on the move, coming home from a day in the store, the gas station, the post office, the little insurance office and, the majority from what looked like a light engineering business. They were striding down the sidewalk in twos and threes, and quite a few were stopping off at the diner. It was a hot afternoon, late July, the temperature was probably in the nineties. Chekov and I had hiked at least twenty kilometres from the crash site, and we’d drunk the last of our water maybe an hour earlier. He slowed up and came to a halt outside the door of the diner. “Do you think we can...”

“How many dollars are you carrying?”

“You think they will make us pay for water?”

I shrugged. I guess he thought that in mid twentieth century Soviet Russia, a couple of strangers turning up without a kopek between them would have been treated to the fatted calf and no questions asked, but I was less starry-eyed about America in that era. “I don’t want to do anything that will draw attention to us. Let’s just hide up for tonight. We can find a fire hydrant or something for now, and look for work tomorrow...”

“Without breakfast?” 

I was just going to hustle him past the open doorway when the sound of a cue striking plastic, or probably ivory, given that it was the 1950s, sounded loud and clear, and that was when I remembered the ‘Legend of Carbon Creek’. “No problem!” I said. “You can have a nice cold beer now, and a real American breakfast tomorrow.” I took Chekov by the arm and led him inside, warning him to keep his mouth shut. I hadn’t yet realised his accent was the least of our problems. 

It worked like the powerful myth it probably was. “You got no money, son?” a middle-aged guy in greasy overalls asked. “Well...” 

That was when I suddenly realised we were facing a difficulty. In T’Pol’s story, the pool player had been willing to stake his currency in exchange for the chance to romance a pretty lady. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think Chekov’s a good-looking guy, and I’d romance him myself if I was that way inclined, and if Starfleet didn’t have rules about shipboard relationships, but I suddenly remembered that, in 1950s Arizona, I should have held back on this particular move until a lady pool player came along.

“...If you win, I’ll pay up. And if you win, you’ll let me buy your friend here dinner.”

I looked over my shoulder at Chekov, wondering if he’d managed to change gender while I was lounging by the table waiting to be offered a game. No. Well, maybe my history was a little out. Maybe I was confusing 1950 with 1850 or something. Either way, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t planning to lose the game. 

Maybe the Arizona sun had melted my brain. 

I think I had some dumb idea that T’Pol’s Vulcans would automatically win at pool, or anything else, because they were twenty second century guys, and naturally smarter than the customers of the Spring Valley Diner. And I’d win, for the same reason. Well, it turned out that this primitive twentieth century auto mechanic had fine-honed his hand-eye coordination by shooting native Americans, or something. He beat me. And then he beat me again for good measure. Chekov was sitting at the bar, watching me screw up the ‘basic geometry’, or whatever T’Pol called it. He rolled his eyes at me. “I think we passed a fire hydrant about fifty metres back down the street.” 

“Move along,” the mechanic said to me, as he took the stool next to Chekov’s and nodded to the guy behind the counter to come serve them. “You’re beat, and I got me a date.”

1850, 2050, this just didn’t feel right. I moved away from the counter, but didn’t leave. I sat down at a table over by the window. There was only the one guy serving, and I figured if I stared hard at the menu, he might ignore me for a while. 

Something was wrong.... I forgot I was studying the menu, and glanced up at the movie posters on the walls. I could put names to some of the stars. Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, and then there was some blond kid, pouting and looking up at Laurence Olivier, in the poster of...

The Prince and the Showboy?

What the hell?

I started to pay more attention to the posters. There wasn’t a single ‘leading lady’ in any of them. 

Just like there hadn’t been any women out in the street, and there wasn’t one female in the diner now.

Chekov was quite happy. He had a big soda and was listening to the mechanic spinning his life story, or talking about the ball game, or persuading him to vote for Nixon. It didn’t matter. 1850, or 2050, I knew my instinct was right. There had never been a town in Arizona where the main street diner displayed gay makeovers of movie posters and men bought each other dinner, and there probably never would. 

I stuck the menu back in its plastic holder and returned to the bar. Chekov’s date had gone to wash his hands. “Chekov, we’re leaving.”

“He has ordered me a burger and fries.”

“I don’t care if he’s buying you breakfast at Tiffanies. This isn’t Earth, and we’re leaving.”

Chekov is stubborn as hell, and that’s another reason I would never romance him. “Sulu,” he grumbled, “I’m hungry.”

I more or less pulled him off the stool and dragged him over to the door. “Why do you think that guy was willing to buy you dinner?”

“I look hungry?”

“Right. And therefore desperate. And therefore, maybe, more willing to sleep with him than you would be in the normal course of events, right?” I hustled him outside. 

“But...”

“I don’t think there are any women on this planet. Just men. Think about it.” Right then, a big grey car that I swear had fins, like a dolphin on wheels, drew up and Captain Kirk leaned out of the window. “Mister Sulu!” he hissed. “Get in.”

I opened the door, pushed Chekov inside and climbed in after him. The captain crunched the gears a couple of times, but we moved off just as Chekov’s date ran out onto the sidewalk and started yelling at us to stop. 

“Get us back to the crash site, Spock,” the captain ordered.

“We should take the second turning on the left, Captain,” Spock said, concentrating on a road map and glancing out of the window from time to time.

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” the captain asked, turning round to look at me. Spock reached out and grabbed the wheel to stop us swerving into the kerb. The captain cursed and faced forward again.

“Mister Scott said ten days,” I said, leaning forward over the back of the bench seat, so that the captain wouldn’t feel the need to turn around again. What I saw made my mouth drop open. No wonder his steering was erratic. Spock was wearing a uniform minidress and the captain had one hand on the wheel and the other on Spock’s thigh.

“He said two hours, Mister Sulu,” the captain corrected. I looked at Chekov. He looked back at me. I realised that he could see what I had seen, thanks to the courtesy mirror on the passenger sunshade

“This is the wrong Earth,” I said.

“And we have been rescued by the wrong Enterprise.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Fanart) Carbon Copy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642513) by [Mylochka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mylochka/pseuds/Mylochka)


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